1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a streaming service, and in particular to a file structure for a streaming service, an apparatus and a method for providing a streaming service which is capable of transmitting data quickly by reducing waste of a network bandwidth by not including unnecessary files in file transmission and expanding an additional service by including a reserved field in a file.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, according to sudden increase of services such as an Internet broadcasting, a VOD (video on demand), a live-casting, etc., people show much interest in a multimedia streaming technology.
Herein, a multimedia streaming means a technology assembling multimedia data such as audio/video data, constructing it as a stream according to a certain file format and transmitting it in real time. Accordingly, a computer user can play a pertinent multimedia stream by simply clicking a button on a web page without downloading a whole file.
In order to perform the above-mentioned multimedia streaming service, an encoder converting analog stream data into digital format data appropriate to streaming, a software managing transmission of contents in order to make possible a live-casting or on-demand multimedia stream subscription, and a multimedia streaming regenerator installed at a computer of the user and constructing and publishing multimedia contents are required. In addition, a channel velocity of a network connected to a server has to be carefully considered in order to provide ceaseless contents transmission and pictures having high picture quality.
Recently, there are various formats for the Internet service and live-casting such as an ASF (active streaming format), a RM (real media), etc., companies providing multimedia solutions have to support all file formats for Internet streaming service as well as a file format of their own by an agreement with the companies.
However, because the solution companies can record additional information unnecessary to users only for service operation of themselves, a quality of the streaming service can be lowered and secrets of users unwillingly can leak out.